Former US Air Force psychologist questioned about his role in Guantanamo interrogation

(January 30) Former Air Force psychologist Dr. James Mitchell was pressed by lawyers representing alleged plotters of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as to his major part of helping the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program.

The Guantanamo interrogation program

Mitchell's company was paid more than $80 million for its portion of the program. The program involved at least 119 detainees who were held in agency black sites following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Black sites and enhanced interrogation

Enhanced interrogation techniques are a euphemism for the techniques used at black sites such as Guantanamo Bay to questions detainees. Black sites were secret facilities often controlled by the CIA used by the US government to detain terror suspects. The detainees were often subject to torture and mistreatment. Then US president George W Bush confirmed the existence of the sites in a speech on Sept. 6, 2006. The sites included Bagram, Gitmo, and Abu Ghraib.

Methods used included beating, binding in stress positions, hooding, deafening noise, sleep and food deprivation and withholding of medical treatment. As well there was waterboarding, sexual humiliation, subjection to extreme heat and cold and confinement in small boxes.

US and European officials have claimed that "enhanced interrogation" was a euphemism for torture. Those officials include former CIA director Leon Panetta, a Guantanamo prosecutor, and a military tribunal judge. Both former president Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder also said that certain techniques used amounted to torture. Although they repudiated the use of these techniques no one was prosecuted for their use.

Mitchell's role

Dr. Mitchell was first hired in April of 2002 as a short term contractor to consult on the interrogation of an Al Qaeda agent Abu Zubaydah. However, by June of the same year, the CIA asked him to help design as well as operate their interrogation program. He and partner Dr. Bruce Jessen then became two of three official CIA waterboarders. Mitchell was paid over $1.4 million and Jessen over $1.2 million from the period 2002 to 2005. The two formed the company Mtchell Jessen Associates that earned $81 million for its work for the US government.

The two also had an agreement that protected them from legal liability for their actions. The US government paid out a million dollars in 2014 and another undisclosed amount in 2017 to representatives of 3 former inmates through a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Mitchell who is now 68 insisted that the techniques he used which were derived through retro-engineering material from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Program (SERE) were approved by the president, justified by Justice Dept. legal memos, and given the green light by the CIA. However, as noted many critics considered the techniques forms of torture. Dr. Mitchell throughout his testimony condemned those who mistreated detainees whom he claimed were CIA officers operating outside his guidelines. He said there were FBI agents at Guantanamo doing similar work to him.

Obama drops contract with Mitchell and Jessen

Mitchell notes that the company year-to-year contract was dropped upon the election of Barack Obama. He said: "They were being pressured by the White House and the Senate, and for the convenience of the government, they said that they were going to cancel our contract. It was canceled after we’d been told it had been renewed.”

Many thought the waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were not effective. The Democratic-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in 2014 that the enhanced techniques were not either a safe nor effective means of collecting intelligence. However, Republican members and some former CIA directors responded that they had no doubt that the program saved lives and was effective in weakening AL Qaeda. Obama banned the use of the techniques with an executive order in 2009 and in 2015 a law further limited methods of interrogation. However, Guantanamo is still open despite Obama's promise to close it and much international condemnation of the facility. In January of 2018 US President Trump issued an executive order that will keep the facility open indefinitely. As of May 2018 there were just 40 inmates left at the facility.

Previously published in the Digital Journal